Abstract: In the global practice of addressing the intermittency challenges of renewable energy, the United States and China, based on their respective resource endowments, industrial foundations, and grid structures, have embarked on two distinct leading pathways. The United States leverages its vast plains and technological advancements to establish a core model centered on "large-scale wind power development + battery energy storage support." China, relying on its world-leading hydropower infrastructure and centralized planning capabilities, has pioneered the river-basin coordination model represented by "hydro-solar complementarity." This report provides an in-depth analysis of the core concepts, technological pathways, development status, and underlying logic of these two models.
1. Core Philosophy of the Models: Market-Driven vs. System Optimization
1.1 The U.S. Model: "Wind-Power-Driven" with Decentralized Layout and Technological Integration
The core of the U.S. model is "wind power first, storage follows." Its development is primarily driven by market mechanisms and technological progress, emphasizing concentrated wind power development in regions with optimal resources. The economic viability and grid-friendliness of wind power are enhanced by pairing it with energy storage or solar PV to create complementarity.
Philosophical Foundation: To maximize the use of excellent wind resources, reduce costs through market competition and technological innovation, and achieve the large-scale, economical replacement of traditional energy by renewables. Project development is characterized by decentralized decision-making and flexible combinations.
Form of Complementarity:Manifests mainly in two forms: First, "geographical wind-solar complementarity," utilizing the abundant wind resources in the Midwest and solar resources in the Southwest to achieve natural smoothing at the grid level. Second, "wind power + battery energy storage," where large-scale battery systems are paired with wind farms to enable energy time-shifting and power regulation.
1.2 The Chinese Model: "Hydropower as the Cornerstone" with Centralized Planning and Basin-Wide Coordination
The core of the Chinese model is "using hydropower to regulate variable renewables, achieving multi-energy complementarity." Its development is primarily driven by national strategy and system planning,emphasizing the use of the exceptional regulation capabilities of existing giant hydropower stations to transform intermittent solar and wind power into stable, reliable, high-quality electricity.
Philosophical Foundation: Treating an entire river basin as a unified, regulatable "energy complex." Hydropower is not only a power source but also a giant "regulator" and "storage battery" serving the entire new energy system, pursuing the maximization of overall system stability and efficiency.
Form of Complementarity: Typically represented by "hydro-solar complementarity," where solar PV generation is directly connected to a hydropower station, which then dispatches and integrates the power uniformly. Hydropower smooths PV fluctuations in real-time and utilizes reservoir capacity for daily and seasonal energy redistribution, delivering clean electricity with a smooth and stable output curve.
2. Comparison of Technological Pathways and System Characteristics
3. Development Drivers and Current Status
3.1 United States: Policy Incentives and Market Choices
Core Drivers: Federal fiscal incentive policies like the Production Tax Credit (PTC) have historically greatly stimulated wind power investment; state-level Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) create stable demand; mature electricity markets (notably ERCOT, PJM) provide diversified value realization channels for wind power and storage.
Current Status: Wind power has become one of the lowest-cost power sources in many regions. According to U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data, wind power has been a leading source of new capacity additions in multiple years. Energy storage (especially battery storage) is accelerating from demonstration to commercial standard, with increasingly tight integration with wind power.
3.2 China: Strategic Planning and Engineering Implementation
Core Drivers: Top-level design of the national "Dual Carbon" goals; clean energy base construction tasks issued in the form of Five-Year Plans; state-owned power generation groups and grid companies as the main investors and implementers, ensuring the realization of large-scale projects.
Current Status: China leads the world in hydropower installed capacity. Building on this, several gigawatt-level hydro-wind-solar integrated bases have been planned and constructed in river basins like the Jinsha River, Yalong River, and the upper reaches of the Yellow River. "Hydro-solar complementarity" has become the standard configuration and technological paradigm for such bases, enabling the large-scale, high-quality integration of new energy.
4. Conclusion: Different Paths to a Clean Energy Future
The model choices of the United States and China are the inevitable result of their respective natural resources, industrial systems, and institutional mechanisms. They represent the two most mainstream and successful paradigms currently addressing the challenge of renewable energy intermittency globally.
The U.S. "Wind-Power-Driven" model is a pathway of "incremental reform" led by technological innovation and market mechanisms. It starts by changing the structure of new power sources, gradually permeating and transforming the existing power system through distributed, modular technological stacking (wind + storage). Its characteristics are flexibility, efficiency, and reliance on continued declines in technology costs.
The Chinese "Hydro-Coordinated" model is a pathway of "system innovation" based on upgrading existing infrastructure. It involves functionally upgrading and intelligently transforming the existing giant hydropower system to serve as the stable cornerstone supporting a future power system dominated by new energy. Its characteristics are solving fundamental problems in a one-off manner with high output quality, but its replicability is strictly limited by geographical conditions.
The two models are different paths to the same goal: building a secure, reliable, and low-carbon modern energy system. In the future, with technological development, these two models may converge: the U.S. is exploring longer-duration storage technologies to address multi-day wind lulls; China is also actively deploying pumped storage and new types of energy storage in its large new energy bases to supplement regulation capacity. The practices of these two dominant models provide valuable references for countries with different conditions worldwide.